Various embodiments are directed to the field of rail-to-rail couplers to couple two or more devices to each other via elongate rails carried by each, and that may also retain related cylindrical articles inserted into apertures of the couplers. More specifically, embodiments are directed to rail-to-rail couplers to couple two or more toy guns (often referred to as “blasters” to distinguish them from real firearms), cameras and/or camera accessories by clamping onto elongate rails and/or mounting shoes having cross-sections similar to such rails.
Such rails are often carried by one or more external portions of typical “blasters” to enable the attachment of various accessories, including so-called “scopes” (often little more than a plastic tube that may or may not include clear sheets of plastic that take the place of real lenses), real scopes that provide some degree of viewing magnification and/or low-light viewing, ammunition holders (often small plastic parts that are able to hold one or more foam darts, plastic darts, rubberized plastic discs, foam balls, sponge-like balls, arrows with or without rubberized and/or foam tips, etc.), handles, lights, microphones, cameras, camera flashes, bipods, tripods and/or still other camera-related accessories.
Hasbro, Incorporated is the manufacturer of a very large line of these blasters under their Nerf trademark. Many of these are designed to fire a foam dart formed from ½″ diameter hollow foam rods that usually have some form of rubberized and/or elastic foam tip glued or otherwise bonded onto one end. Others of such darts may have pieces of hook-and-loop type fastening material glued or bonded onto one end, possibly onto such a rubberized and/or elastic foam tip on that end. These foam darts (typically about 2 to 3 inches long). have become so very pervasive in the toy industry, that they have become something of a de facto standard that many competitors copy the design of when they offer competing blasters.
The Nerf blaster product line has been known to use other types of “ammunition” such as the recently introduced “Mega” darts that are of substantially the same structure, but larger in all dimensions—typically ¾″ diameter hollow foam rods with a rubberized tip glued onto one end, and typically about 3 to 4 inches long. Various competing product lines to the Nerf blaster product line have also used other darts of similar configuration, but differing dimensions.
Mattel Corporation is the manufacturer of one competing line of blasters under their newly created BoomCo trademark. Many of these are designed to fire a plastic dart formed from ⅜″ diameter hollow plastic tubing material that resembles the material from which drinking straws are often made. Like the Nerf foam darts, the BoomCo plastic darts usually have a rubberized tip glued (or otherwise connected to) one end of the main drinking-straw-like body.
Although Mattel has introduced their own competing type of “ammunition” as an alternative to the ½″ diameter foam darts offered by Hasbro, Mattel has adopted a rail design for the attachment of accessories that is dimensionally very similar to the “tactical rails” offered by Hasbro. More specifically, both types of rail are generally connected by a ½″ wide narrower portion to an external surface of a blaster, while the rails themselves are about ¾″ wide.
Other manufacturers of blasters, and other toys of other varieties that fire paint balls, marker balls and even small arrows or bolts have adopted and use rails on their products that adhere to the shape, dimensions and other characteristics of either of both of the Picatinny Rail or the Weaver Rail. Picatinny Rail was adopted by the U.S. military as a standard (MIL-STD-1913), and became the basis of a newer standard adopted by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as the NATO Accessory Rail (NAR) or STANAG 4694. The specifications of MIL-STD-1913 and the derivative STANAG 4694 are each incorporated herein by reference in their entirety.
Both Hasbro (as Nerf) and Mattel (as BoomCo) offer various attachments that slide onto their respective rails from one of the ends of the rails, and are designed to engage a rail stop or other formation incorporated into (or otherwise connected to or associated with) the rails at a position where such slide-on accessories are then caused to stop moving therealong. Over time, various vendors (including those with 3D printers) have sought to create their own accessories designed for attachment to such blasters via such rails. Unfortunately, unlike what is typically encountered in the manufacturing of Picatinny rail and the various derivatives discussed above, the manufacturing tolerances employed by Hasbro and Mattel in their rails have been sufficiently “loose” as to frustrate efforts to develop such attachments. Hasbro and Mattel typically design their own slide-on accessories with rail engagement formations made of plastic that is sufficiently flexible as to accommodate such variances in rail dimensions. In contrast, the PLA and ABS plastics typically used in the making of plastic parts by 3D printers are usually too stiff.
As a result, some of such vendors have taken to designing their accessories to employ various clamping mechanisms, many employing screws or other such hardware, to impart a degree of adjustability in their designs to accommodate these variances in rail dimensions.
More recently, Hasbro, Incorporated has begun to offer video cameras that designed to be coupled to many of their blasters by gripping the rails thereof with a clamping mechanism. It should be noted that such video cameras, which can include relatively heavy battery power supplies, are among the heavier attachments offered by Hasbro, as well as other entities, for attachment to such rails. This use of a clamping mechanism by Hasbro for such cameras is believed to be the first instance of Hasbro employing a clamping mechanism with any accessory intended to be mounted to blasters by such rails.
Sharing similar dimensions and other physical attributes to the rails provided by such toy manufacturers as Hasbro and Mattel are the mounting shoes employed for decades by manufacturers of cameras and accessories for cameras. More specifically, many cameras for decades have offered a single “hot shoe” or “cold shoe” mounting point on the top surface thereof for the attachment of a flash. A hot shoe is distinguished from a cold shoe in that a hot shoe includes an electrical contact that enables a camera to trigger operation of the flash through the hot shoe, thereby obviating the need for an external cable between the camera and the flash. A cold shoe provides the physical mounting capability of a hot shoe, but not the electrical contact and corresponding ability to control operation of a flash.
Since the introduction of both varies of shoe mounting point, at least the cold shoe variety has gone on to be adopted by many camera manufacturers and manufacturers of accessories for cameras to either alternatively or additionally provide a mounting point for the mounting of an external microphone and/or external lights to cameras. Indeed, such extensive use has been made of the such mounting points that various mounting point expansion accessories have also been offered that mount to the single shoe mounting point often provided by a camera to then provide two or more shoe mounting points to enable the attachment of multiple other accessories, simultaneously.
It appears that, possibly by happenstance, the cross-section of such mounting shoes very closely resemble the cross-section of the rails provided on the casings of blasters offered by both Hasbro and Mattel. It has become increasingly commonplace for those who engage in the recreational activity of using such blasters in playtime “combat” (e.g., so-called “Nerf wars” or “Humans vs. Zombies” games) to mount video cameras to their blasters to generate “point-of-view” videos of their “combat” exploits from a perspective aligned with the barrels of their blasters. Many of the same vendors offering 3D printed attachments for use with such rails have sought to create various camera mount adapting attachments to enable the attachment, to such rails, of cameras that use the typical ¼″ tripod screw mount or the hinged camera mount more recently introduced and popularized by GoPro, Incorporated.